Accra, Oct. 7,GNA- Ghana took a lion's share of 796 million US dollars as receipts of tourists in the country in 2006, representing 42 per cent of West Africa's total international tourist destination receipts of 1.9 billion US dollars.

The country also recorded the highest receipts per international tourist arrival of 1,855 US dollars.

These figures were made known during a tourism exchange forum organised by the United Nations World Tourism Organization under its Sustainable Tourism for Eliminating Poverty Foundation (UNWTO ST-EP) supported by the Korean Government in Accra. The forum brought together tourism Ministers and other delegates from West African member countries to deliberate on issues affecting tourism and how to turn the region into the tourism destination of Africa.

Mr Helder Tomas, UNWTO Regional representation for Africa said the total number of international tourist arrivals in Africa in 2006 was 41million, representing 5 per cent of the world arrival. He said,West Africa recorded 4 million international tourist arrivals in 2006, representing 10 per cent of the total with Nigeria as the largest destination in terms of arrivals in the sub-region followed by Senegal.

Mr Tomas said although arrival grew by an average of 7 per cent annually since 1990 more needed to be done in order to earn more from the tourist industry.

He observed that although some countries received more tourist arrivals it did not reflect positively in their foreign exchange earnings.

This he explained might be attributed to the high cost of living in that particular country or much is not done to attract tourist spend money on expenditure.

He said there were numerous problems that were confronting African countries as to how best the continent can derive optimum from its numerous tourism potentials.

Lack of regional tourism policy framework, insufficient Air connections, slow facilitation of traveling documents, political instability, image problem and lack of effective marketing initiatives in some African countries were identified as some of the threats facing the tourism industry in Africa.

Ambassador Dho Young Shim , Chairperson of UNWTO-STEP Foundation on the occasion said the forum was part of their celebrations to mark the 30 years diplomatic ties between Korea and Ghana.

She said as a way of showing the numerous appreciations to Ghana, two pilot programmes dubbed: 'Thank You Small Library" (TYSL) a small library which is meant to grant people who do not have access to books the opportunity to have easy access was commissioned in Abokobi and Danfa.

She said the TYSL initiative aims to use education to eliminate poverty by increasing the number of libraries in poorer regions of the world.

Ambassador Young Shim said tourism was fast becoming an agent of transformation and development and the UNWTO initiative was to help promote tourism in Africa. Mr Stephen Asamoah-Boateng, Minister of Tourism, called for effective collaboration in the areas of security, information, and experience between African Ministers in-charge of tourism in order to derive more from its abundant tourism potentials. OCT 07